'Our intervention follows evidence of firms aggressively marketing CFDs to the general public, meaning retail consumers are buying a product that isn’t appropriate for them. We saw firms offering CFDs with increasingly higher leverage, resulting in high proportions of consumers losing money. EU rules are temporary. The new rules maintain and strengthen protections for consumers.'

The rules apply from 1 August 2019 for CFDs and 1 September 2019 for CFD-like options.

CFD-like options includes options that have similar pay-out structure and risk features as CFDs, which are sold under a variety of commercial labels, including turbo certificates, knock outs or delta ones. These products were not included in ESMA’s temporary restrictions that have been in effect since 1 August 2018.